The A87 #6 - the Ghost Road from Tomdoun to Cluanie

To remind you from episode 3 of this tour along the A87, the stretch of it from Glen Garry to Glen Moriston - which leaves the shore of Loch Garry at the turn-off to Kinloch Hourn and goes over the hills to join the A887 up from Invermoriston at Bunloyne (orange on the map above) - only dates back to the 1950s. Before that, the A87 continued along Glen Garry to Tomdoun then turned north to meet the A887 at Cluanie. However that route was cut in 1957 by the flooding of Glen Loyne, which it passed through, to create Loch Loyne hydro-electric reservoir. So, after a proposal to build a viaduct over the new reservoir had been abandoned, it was by-passed by the present route to Bunloyne (orange) and, because nobody lived along it, the old road from Tomdoun to Cluanie on either side of Loch Loyne was simply abandoned. But it's still there with most of its stone bridges and retaining walls as built by the Highland Roads & Bridges Commission (HRBC) under the supervision of Thomas Telford between 1815-20 still intact. So let's go for a walk along this wonderful ten miles of "ghost road".

 

Below is the junction 250 metres past the Tomdoun Hotel - straight on to Kinloch Hourn, right on the A87 to Cluanie:-

 

Google Streetview

And here's the junction looking back east having arrived from Kinloch Hourn - left on the A87 to Cluanie and straight on to Invergarry:-

Google Streetview

The Google Streetview car has been up the first 600 metres of the old road so you can go for a virtual walk that far - start here. Beyond the gate which stopped the GSV car going any further, I walked as far as Loch Loyne in 1987. The views are rather obscured nowadays by forestry plantations right up to the edge of the road which weren't there when it was still in use and this was back in the days of 35mm film which I could scarcely afford but I did manage a photo of a nice bit of early 19th century HRBC walling:-

between Tomdoun and Loch Loyne

And one of what I'd come to see - the ghost road disappearing into the waters of Loch Loyne although the one below by Glen Wallace is much better than my effort so I'm going to show it instead:-

 

the old A87 disappearing into Loch Loyne

There's more comprehensive photographic coverage of the old road on the wonderful Geograph website (which, if you've never seen it before, collects photos of every grid square in Great Britain). Start here and use the square at the top of the page (with "Go" in the middle surrounded by NW, N, NE etc.) to navigate from grid square to grid square along the road.

At the point where the road crossed the floor of Glen Loyne, at a spot called Na Paitean, the River Loyne divided into two streams before recombining again 250 metres downstream leaving a sort of island in the stream. The road crossed this island necessitating a bridge over each branch of the river as you can see on the map below:-

Ordnance Survey 6 inch map, 2nd edition: National Libraries of Scotland

The floor of Glen Loyne is a pretty marshy place and I'm guessing from the fact that Na Paitean translates as 'stepping stones' that this was the only solid enough spot to carry the road across, albeit at the cost of having to build two bridges instead of one.

The north bridge - which the OS map above shows acquired the name of Drochaid nam Paitean ('Stepping Stones Bridge') - was the bigger of the two. It made it onto an engraving of thirty seven of the HRBC's most significant bridges you can see here (top row, second from right). Both bridges disappeared under water when the glen was flooded in the 1950s but they re-appear when the reservoir is drained down. The arch of the larger north bridge was still standing in 2013, albeit reduced to half its width, but had fallen by 2018. The arch of the smaller south bridge is still standing to its full width. Here's a selection of images:-

Aerial imagery of Loch Loyne at a low level revealing the still intact south bridge and the fallen north bridge - National Libraries of Scotland

 

First, the south bridge viewed from the east. Note the quality of the stones around the arch - it's testament to the inherent strength and structural properties of an arch that it's the bit still standing when most of the rest has been washed away:

 

South bridge from the east - photo credit: Colin Cadden

 

Next, the north bridge of which pictures are more plentiful:- 

The north bridge still standing in 2013 viewed from the east - photo credit: Martin Briscoe

close up on the north bridge from the west - photo credit: Trevor Wright

The reduced width of the north bridge in 2010 - photo credit Peter Goddard

the north bridge at higher water - photo credit RdGA09

 

Beyond the bridges, the old road climbs the north flank of Glen Loyne towards a pass in the Cluanie Ridge which separates it from Glen Moriston to the north. Remember to use Geograph.org to go for a virtual walk along the road - there are no forestry plantations here to obscure the view: start here.

 

The rather grainy picture below is the only one I've ever seen of this part of the old road when still in use. It's about half way up to the top of the pass looking back (east) down into Glen Loyne:

 

looking down into Glen Loyne from the old road from Cluanie to Tomdoun - photo credit: Flickr user 'Totally Random' (account appears to have been deleted)

Here's a couple more pictures of this part of the old road in more recent times since it was abandoned:-

 

looking up towards the summit of the pass - photo credit: Trevor Wright

 

One of the original HRBC bridges built 1815-20 still in good condition - photo credit: Chris Wimbush

 

Looking east from the Cluanie Ridge into Glen Loyne with the reservoir quite low. The old A87 climbing up to the pass from the bridges is clearly visible on the left - photo credit: Johnston

The pass between Glen Loyne and Glen Moriston doesn't have a name marked on OS maps but I've seen it called Mam Cluanie on a postcard (below). Anyway, whatever it's called its elevation is 1,424 feet which made it Scotland's second highest trunk road after the Drumochter Pass (A9 - 1,513ft). Higher than the Slochd (A9 - 1,328ft) or Carter Bar (A68 - 1,371ft) and also the present A87 to Bunloyne (1,150ft), it's no surprise the old road was regularly closed by snow in winter. There exists a wonderful tale of two Hydro Board engineers who got stuck in snow drifts up here in the winter of 1951/52:-

British Newspaper Archive

It's too big to post a legible screengrab of all of it but the gist of it is this: Electric power to the whole of Skye was lost in bad weather after Christmas 1951. The Hydro Board's local depot at Kyle of Lochalsh was beginning to suspect the problem lay with the underwater part of the cable linking the island to the mainland but needed specialist equipment to confirm this so an engineer, the splendidly named Dysart Pattullo, and a driver, J W M'Donald (pictured), were dispatched with it from Dundee. They left there in a van at 10.00 on 31 December:-

"They found the roads icy and slight snow falling, but reached Tomdoun in Glengarry, by 7.45pm.

They called at a hotel there before trying the climb over to Cluanie, in Glenmoriston. As they drove out of Tomdoun the snow began to fall heavily and soon there were six inches on the road.

By the time they had covered about five miles of the steep climb [past the bridges and about half way up to the summit of Mam Cluanie] the snow had reached a depth of 2ft. 6in. and visibility was almost negligible.

Seven and a half miles from Tomdoun [i.e. at the summit] the van mounted a deep snow bank and came to a standstill. When M'Donald got out to test the depth of the snow with a shovel, it disappeared.

Realising the van could not move, and as it was 11pm on New Year's eve, the men decided to spend the night in blankets they had brought along.

Just as new year came in they began to worry. The snow was still falling and they had no guarantee they would even be able to see the road the next morning.

Wrapping their coats around them, they set off back to Tomdoun. After a nightmarish journey through nearly eight miles of deep snow the men arrived back at the hotel.

There they found the owner, Miss Grant, her farmer brother, and another brother home on leave just finishing their New Year celebrations.

The near frozen men were given a true Highland welcome, and, after having their "New Year", the programme was tea, sandwiches and bed, with hot water bottles."

All I can say is that, considering they set off to walk through eight miles of snow drifts in the dark at midnight, the Grant siblings must have been pretty hard party-ers if they were still on the go when the hydro boys arrived! And they must have drunk the place dry if all that was on offer by that time was tea!

I've not been able to find a picture of Mam Cluanie, or anywhere between there and Tomdoun, in winter conditions so the one below at the top of the pass looking north to the mountains between Loch Cluanie and Glen Affric will have to do:-

Photo credit: Trevor Littlewood

The sequel of the tale is that the Grant brothers had a car each so, the next morning, one of them and Mr M'Donald drove to Invergarry for the nearest phone (!) to inform the Hydro Board at Kyle what had happened and request a snow plough be sent up to the pass from the Cluanie side. The other brother and Mr Pattullo drove the other way to try and recover the abandoned van but had to turn back to Tomdoun. In the afternoon, there must have been a bit of an improvement in the weather because all four set off again and managed to get to within two miles of the van. They walked to it but it couldn't be freed from the snowdrifts, nor was there any sign of a snow plough so they returned to Tomdoun. The following morning, they returned to the scene to find the van had gone! Unbeknown to them, a snowplough had been up during the night and recovered it so there was nothing for it but for the hydro boys to walk on to Cluanie whence they got a lift to Kyle. (Incidentally, the testing equipment in the van was none the worse for its ordeal and located the fault in the cabling to Skye on the seabed just off Kyle. New cable was dispatched from Glasgow on the puffer Invercloy although the newspaper report ended on the discouraging note: "Last night the [Hydro] board was informed that the Invercloy had run into a gale on its way to Lochalsh.")   

The Dundee Courier reckoned the men from the Hydro Board had walked 23 miles in the snow in 48 hours although I think that involved an overestimate of the distance from the top of the pass down to Cluanie which is only three miles. It's a shorter, steeper drop than the climb up from Glen Loyne.

Glen Loyne in the caption is a mistake - it's Strath Cluanie, as the upper most part of Glen Moriston is called

 

There are some fine old retaining walls and bridges still intact along this stretch of the road. Here's a selection of images:-

 

Looking back up towards Mam Cluanie - photo credit: John Ferguson

 

Drochaid an Uillt Ghiubhais ('Birch Burn Bridge') - photo credit: Steven Brown

 

Drochaid an Uillt Ghiubhais - photo credit: Gordon Brown

 

Drochaid an Uillt Ghiubhais with Loch Cluanie in the background - photo credit: Toby Speight

    

a nice bit of HRBC retaining wall - photo credit: Hugh Venables

Approaching the bottom of the glen, the old road passes Cluanie Lodge. Perched above Loch Cluanie in its clump of trees, this is a familiar landmark seen from the modern road on the other side of the loch - see here for example. But here are a couple of views of the lodge from the angle far more people would have seen it from when the old road was still in use - and when the lodge wasn't in a loch-side setting because Loch Cluanie hadn't yet been enlarged to its doorstep by the hydro-electric schemes.

 

'Marn' is a misprint for Mam. Cluanie Lodge in the clump of trees. Loch Cluanie now fills the whole bottom of the glen

 

Cluanie Lodge from the south east

From hereon, the old road remains in use as the private road to the lodge and finally, ten miles from leaving Tomdoun, we cross the River Cluanie and arrive at the junction at the Cluanie Inn with the A887 (as was, now the A87) from Invermoriston.

 

Approaching Cluanie from Tomdoun. That HRBC bridge was demolished during the hydro works in the 1950s and replaced by a new one 30 metres upstream to serve Cluanie Lodge. I think that was because the original bridge would have been too vulnerable to the waters of the enlarged Loch Cluanie.

 

Cluanie Inn from the south beside the bridge over the River Cluanie carrying the old road to Tomdoun

I shall come back and write about the new road, Loch Cluanie and the Cluanie Inn in future posts. I leave you here with a One Inch map of the old road from Tomdoun to Cluanie (click to enlarge).

 

Ordnance Survey 1956 One Inch map, extracts from Sheets 35 (Loch Arkaig) and 36 (Fort Augustus)